To see larger images of the black charts below click here.
Something happened for the first time in our nation’s history in the last election. Something that has to have a profound impact on the future of our party. I have not seen much commentary on it either. I mean I have looked over the results of the election time and again myself and just never really grasped the gravity of what happened.
For the first time in a presidential election people with a college degree made up the largest block of voters for one of the major parties. The Democratic Party.
I am not sure we have stepped back to consider the ramifications of that as yet. It is a big deal in my estimation and yet we spend all of our time talking about Trump and his voters right now. The real issue is what is happening with our voting base and what the implications moving forward will be.
The biggest issue is how this came to be. There are some concerning numbers to consider and issues to be discussed.
history of the vote by party and education level
The data in the graphic below was arrived at by taking what exit polling data was available at the time and applying the rates to the actual final vote total. So, for example, in 2008 I took the total vote of 131,473,705 and multiplied it by the rate of each education level listed. Once I had the vote total for each education level I then multiplied that number by the rate reported supporting each candidate. At the bottom of this post is an example of the calculation for those with post-graduate degrees.
So with that note on methodology out of the way let’s take a look at the vote history by those holding college degrees versus those that do not.
THE HISTORIC VIEW
In 1976 people holding a college degree made up 15% of the population. They voted at a high rate, and Republicans won their vote. It was not even close on the vote from those without degrees though, we trounced the Republicans that year.
The first year f the Reagan Revolution saw the nondegree vote flip while Republicans maintained their lead with college degree voters. It was not until his reelection that Reagan actually drove up the numbers with nondegree voters. From that 1984 peak, the bottom fell out for the Republicans. Meanwhile, both parties saw steady growth with college degree holders.
For a long time, there has been much debate about who Perot hurt the most, looking at the vote totals broken out this way, it is pretty clear he crushed Bush, without a doubt. Without those Perot years, Republicans would probably have a real stable line of support from nondegree holding voters from 88 until now.
Once we hit the 2000s, both parties saw a huge spike in support from nondegree holding voters in 2004. We held the line in 2008 with these voters while Republicans lost a little ground, while Obama really spiked the football with his college degree holder numbers. We end the tour of the last 40 years of education level history with the largest block of voters in the election being a college degree holding cohort supporting us Democrats.
A FEW MORE DETAILED NOTES FOR US DEMOCRATS FROM THE OBAMA WINS TO NOW
I repeat, not only were those 35,657,383 degree holding the largest block of voters for us, they made the largest cohort of votes in the entire election. Given that it was the third largest cohort just one cycle ago that is a pretty remarkable shift.
On its face, growing the vote from the college educated group makes perfect sense and we should keep pursuing these voters. It is a growing segment of the population over time. In 1976 College degree holders made up just 15% of the population, that figure is now 32%. So it is growing.
The problem remains though is that means that 68% of the population does not hold a degree. We have spent a ton of time harping on and on and on about Trump voters, where we lost the vote is in the ground we have been losing the noncollege degree holding voter.
In 2008 the largest voting cohort were people that voted for Obama that did not hold a college degree. In fact, in terms of education level, that was the largest total voters ever to cast a ballot at 37,986,839. You might think that that peak amount was due to the massive turnout Obama drew across the board. You would be mistaken, however. Kerry registered the second highest total with these Democratic voters in 2004 at 37,666,655 votes from this group.
So what has happened since the peak? Decline, decline, decline
So we peaked out with noncollege degree holding voters in 2008. Just 3 cycles later we have lost 7,873,927 from this cohort alone. That is about 21% of the 37,986,839 peak gone from our base of support in 8 short years. This is where we lost this election, this reality is something we have not really tried to wrap our minds around.
People think we have. There is this narrative out there that the “White Working Class” voter flocked to Trump’s banner in record numbers. This is demonstrably untrue and the more we push that narrative the more we actually feed the hateful Trump propaganda machine. Let’s turn our attention to this point next.
BUSTING THE MYTH THAT THE WHITE WORKING CLASS HAS FLOCKED TO TRUMP"S HATEFUL BANNER
Look, racists and sexists make up a disturbing portion of the Republican base. I do not like that fact any more than the next activist Democrat sort does. It is a terrible commentary on where our society stands today and presents a very real danger to far too many of us for simply being who we are. It is important to remember all of that.
It is equally important to understand what happened in the election last fall and the raw numbers do not reflect the accepted narrative. Here is the graphic first.
The Republican vote no matter what segment you look at based on white voter by education level or nonwhite voter by education remain remarkably consistent. The reality is Trump did 335,323 votes worse with whites than did Romney overall. Granted he gained 926,649 votes amongst whites without college degrees but he lost 1,261,973 from whites with degrees.
Even more surprising is what happened with the nonwhite vote for Trump. The nonwhite vote for both degree holders and nondegree holders went up 1,416,915 and 963,638 votes respectively for a total increase of 2,380,553 votes for Trump.
Honestly, though the real lesson is Trump just got the Republican base. He did worse with college whites than Romney and he got crushed by Bush totals with white nondegree holders. Again, it sucks that so many people stuck with Trump, but he really only got the typical Republican voter. That is all, nothing remarkable happened within their usual vote. It is terrible the white ethno-nationalists that typically hold their nose and vote for Republicans were happy to cast their vote this time, but it remains Trump did nothing special here, he just won the typical Republican vote.
What I really want to discuss is what is going on with the Democratic vote though, I just felt it important to drive home the point that not much really changed for the Republican vote first.
So What Happened within the Democratic vote since the nondegree peak years of 04 & 08
While the Republican vote was marked with stability, our vote has been anything but. As I note above, we have lost 7.9 million votes from the noncollege degree holding voter population since just 2008. Looking at the Republican vote totals it is clear these voters ARE NOT going to them in any significant numbers. That means they are just leaving us.
Just looking at the changing nature of our base you can spot some important issues:
rank of Education Cohort support of Democrats by white vs nonwhite voters
2008 |
2012 |
2016 |
White NonDegree 33% |
White NonDegree 29% |
White Degree 29% |
White Degree 27% |
White Degree 25% |
NonWhite Degree 25% |
NonWhite NonDegree 22% |
NonWhite NonDegree 24% |
White NonDegree 25% |
NonWhite Degree 18% |
NonWhite Degree 22% |
NonWhite NonDegree 21% |
I am happy to see our vote become more diverse, that said the decline in support from people without degrees no matter the race is something we must contend with. Not only are we losing ground in terms of rate of support, but we are losing in actual vote totals. We have lost 6,708,009 white voters from the nondegree group since 2008 peak with nondegree voters and we have lost 1,228,155 votes from nonwhite nondegree folks since that peak year of 2008. Those are huge losses. The total population has increased as well, so we are not seeing a pool of fewer nondegree voters, we are just losing their vote.
Since I know how these conversations tend to go I will reiterate these white nondegree voters are not going to Republicans, Since 2008 Republicans show a 900,000 gain those voters while we lost more than 6.7 million of them.
SO WHAT ARE tHE RAMIFICATIONS OF ALL THIS?
I do not pretend to have all of the answers to this question. That said, I do believe it is an important question to consider. Insofar as we have not considered the ramifications of this radical loss of support from voters without college degrees I feel we will continue to suffer through more bad election cycles.
When you consider the data on real wages for people not holding degrees over the last 40 years only showing declines over that time frame it is not surprising these voters are checking out of the system. It is just costing us more than it is Republicans. Here is the wage history in two charts:
and since the economic collapse:
So given this wage reality and the facts that unless you have a degree it is likely you are continually losing ground while everyone else is prospering then it should not shock us we are losing votes.
So the question I woud love to see discussed in the comments is this:
What are the ramifications of us becoming the College Party?
Methodology Example
131,473,705 (Total votes cast)
X
17% (Rate of total vote cast by those holding post graduate degrees)
22,325,513 (total number of post grads voting in 2008)
X
58% (Rate of post graduate vote that went to Obama)
13,034,789 (total number of votes from those holding a post graduate degree for Obama)
I do a little more tweaking of the figure to make sure the numbers balance out because the exit polls only report whole numbers 58% when the reality is Obama got 58.3% of this vote. There was no specific polling data for 84 or 88 so I did a little modeling to arrive at those figures.